Music: "Artistry" at the Conga Room

November 04, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I haven't been out for music in a couple weeks, but tonight I'm going to wander west on Wilshire (like that?) to check out "Artistry" at the Conga Room. I got emails about the event from Yardley, and I definitely am excited about getting out to see them again (it's been far too long), but I'm also really looking forward to Joe Purdy and Quincy.

My musical attention of late has been focused on some cool stuff downtown, but I don't want to count any chickens before they hatch, so I'm not going to talk about that yet.

new life for the laptop

November 04, 2004 by Eric Richardson

On Tuesday afternoon I ordered a new laptop hard drive to replace my ailing one. That turned out to be a good move, as my loveable drive quickly turned from correctable drive ticks to a mindset where it would hit something it didn't like and lockup solid.

Here's why I love CDW: I ordered the new drive Tuesday afternoon, probably around 3pm PST. CDW's in Illinois, so that's 5pm or so for them. This morning my drive arrived. It shipped from Iowa yesterday morning and made it to my door 24 hours later. And that was with the cheap shipping (which ended up being UPS 2-day Air... $13 or so).

I never understood how small laptop hard drives were until today. These things are tiny. A credit card almost covers the entire surface of one.

My installation procedure is pretty much down to a science. From the blank drive I restored Windows XP using the Toshiba rescue DVD. That's just a ghost image that throws the factory default installation onto the drive. Then I booted into a Knoppix cd and used qtparted to resize the Windows partition down to 12gig or so. Then I booted the Debian netinstall cd, and Debian's currently downloading and installing.

Hopefully this will bring some closure to my laptop and drive issues.

ah, the force of inertia

November 03, 2004 by Eric Richardson

For a long time now I've been using a keyboard that has a broken-off Insert key. Not a big deal: I don't use insert that often. But then just now something clicked and my mind said, "Hey knucklehead, you've got two keyboards identical to the one you use but without a broken key sitting right out in your living room."

I guess I'm going to switch.

Update (a minute or two later): Whoah... This keyboard's a lot cleaner than my old one. The keys are an entirely different shade of grey.

hacked by me?

November 03, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I just totally freaked myself out into thinking I had been hacked. I logged onto my server and saw a last login line I didn't recognize at all, at a time last night when I didn't think I was anywhere near a computer. I didn't need this.

Then I realized I actually ssh'ed in from Kathy's apartment then to check my email.

Whew...

I should keep a more active eye on the logs, though. I do see stuff like:

Nov  2 05:46:51 bit sshd[31463]: Illegal user patrick from 137.48.138.228
Nov  2 05:46:52 bit sshd[31465]: Illegal user patrick from 137.48.138.228
Nov  2 05:46:58 bit sshd[31478]: Illegal user rolo from 137.48.138.228
Nov  2 05:46:59 bit sshd[31481]: Illegal user iceuser from 137.48.138.228
Nov  2 05:47:00 bit sshd[31483]: Illegal user horde from 137.48.138.228
Nov  2 05:47:01 bit sshd[31486]: Illegal user cyrus from 137.48.138.228
Nov  2 05:47:02 bit sshd[31489]: Illegal user www from 137.48.138.228
Nov  2 05:47:03 bit sshd[31491]: Illegal user wwwrun from 137.48.138.228

That one goes on for another 20 names or so. I feel pretty good about my security, but always better safe than sorry.

ah, long hours on the air

November 03, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Last night I had class until 6:45 and then a meeting until 9, but after that I got sucked into watching the election coverage. We bounced around the different coverage a good bit, but mostly stuck to CBS. Dan Rather's had his issues of late, but how can you argue with lines like:

But as we always say, if a frog had side-pockets it'd carry a handgun.

And:

Now let's catch you up. Maybe you just put the baby to bed, or went and popped the cap on a beverage, adult or otherwise.

Adult or otherwise.

Beautiful.